


The Study of Loss and Malting

by wittyno



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Childhood Trauma, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, It's All Sad, Jeff is recounting part of his childhood so it is dark, it's angsty, warning: descriptions of child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:29:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27575887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wittyno/pseuds/wittyno
Summary: Jeff is not himself and Annie checks up on him. Set right after Cooperative Calligraphy.
Relationships: Annie Edison/Jeff Winger, implied Britta/Jeff
Comments: 13
Kudos: 47





	The Study of Loss and Malting

**Author's Note:**

> I do not agree with season 4's interpretation of Jeff's dad. This happened due to the lovely people on the community discord server, specifically the fanfic channel. Thank you to them.

Of all the days to be sober. Jeff wished he could crawl into the nearest bottle. Maybe pick up some chick at a bar. Spend a couple of hours distracted. But he had promised to help Annie finish her hospital diorama. He hadn’t wanted to, but Annie had snuck up on him and used her blue doe’s eyes against him. Not that she needed his help. Maybe just maybe she just wanted to spend time with him. The second Annie had turned her enormous eyes on him, he said yes. Annie had always gotten Jeff to do things he didn’t want to do. She had roped him into debate. Last week, he had torn apart the study room just to find her pen.

Jeff didn’t enjoy thinking about Annie. No, he corrected himself. He enjoyed thinking about her too much. That was the problem. He thought about the Transfer Dance and how she had listened to him. He had just done something extra shitty, but she didn’t judge him. Then she had kissed him. All sweet and warm and soft. An invitation, not a demand. He had done the only thing he could think of. Kiss her back. 

The next morning the guilt set in. She was so young and he so old and gross. She had told him so herself. Then he’d ignored her all summer. While he hadn’t seen the real Annie all summer. The Annie in his head was more present than ever. She enjoyed Desperate Housewives with him, watched him workout, and even joined him in the shower. Every day he spent with imaginary Annie made him feel worse. She was so young and naïve. By the end of the summer, he had resolved to tell her he had made a mistake. He found Annie on the first day of school in the parking lot. Annie had greeted him with a big smile and then he had unceremoniously taken her aside between all the cars and the honking and told her what had happened was a mistake. Jeff had excepted Annie to cry or run to Shirley, but she had just looked up at him wide-eyed and nodded.

Since then Jeff had tried to keep away from her. But then the pen fiasco happened. Annie yelling at him. Annie ripping off her clothes just to prove a point. Annie sitting across from him, smiling at him as Troy told his dumb ghost story. So many times he had just wanted to go up to her and kiss her. He would be tarred and feathered, but there were moments. Annie’s voice tore him out of his memory pit.

“Everything ok, Jeff?” 

“Yeah, it’s fine.” Annie gave him a look as if to tell him to stop shitting her. But he couldn’t tell her. Show her another piece of his already cracked self. He wasn’t dumb he knew how she felt about him. Annie had a crush, or at least a crush on the Jeff Winger she knew. What she didn’t know was that he and Britta… He doubted it would charm her to find out that he and Britta had been hooking up all year. So why not tell her? Why not break her illusion? Truth was, he liked the way she looked at him. Like he was her superhero. As if he could do anything. The reason that he had chosen Britta was because Britta knew the rules. Britta was safe, risk-free. Annie felt dangerous. 

“If you don’t want to be here, you can go home.” Annie’s tone was icy, but her eyes burned with hurt. He had done it again. Disappointing Annie always felt like what had he told her, strangling a mermaid with a bike chain. She excepted him to be a good guy, but she didn’t ask him to to be one. One day she was going to realize he was a bad guy and she would give up on him. He tried not to think about what that would do to him. He needed to get out of there. Maybe hit up a bar. 

Annie watched Jeff leave the study room. He had said he wanted to help her. Not that she needed his help, but she enjoyed spending time with him, and if the start of the semester had taught her anything, it was that Jeff Winger didn’t like being confronted by his feelings.

He needed everyone to think he ran on sarcasm and coolness alone. She rolled her eyes. Most of the time he acted like he was above it all, but every now and again he pulled her right back in. Annie knew that Jeff was the reason they all stayed and helped her look for her pen. Had he just ignored her and left for his date with Gwynnifer, none of the rest of them would have stayed and helped her look. Jeff stayed.

He came and help her with her diorama. She had been so excited to see him. He had been on the phone when he walked through the door. His face covered in a mask of forced serenity. Annie knew that something was very wrong.

She wanted to be mad at Jeff. He had promised to help her, and then he had just bailed on her. But she couldn’t quite get there. As Annie watched him walk out of the study room, she stopped herself from following him home to make sure he was ok. He had said it himself. She was a mistake. A teenage with her head in National Review. He was most likely fine. Had a rough night, maybe stayed out too late with Gwynnifer. Yet she kept coming back to his eyes. They weren’t just tried after a long night of drinking and sex. Something was haunting them. As if he had seen a ghost. A pit was burrowing itself into her stomach. 

Annie forced herself to finish her diorama, but on her way home without meaning to, she ended up in front of Jeff’s apartment building. His house was dark. He was out with Gwynnifer. Against all better judgement, Annie parked her car in and got out. She rang the doorbell, but no one answered. She rang it again. Nothing. She was about to leave when a kind looking old lady opened the door “can I help you, sweetie?”

“Hi, I am Annie, I am...” Annie stuttered and then just blurted out the first thing that came to her “apartment 69’s girlfriend.” Smooth moves Annie she thought. 

“Oh, Jeff’s girlfriend.” Of course this woman knew Jeff. “I love what you did with your hair. The blond did not suit you at all.” Gwynnifer was blonde. Good to know. No, she chastised herself. She didn’t need more info on Gwynnifer. Jeff’s love life was none of her concern. She straightened and smoothed down her yellow cardigan. 

“Uh… thank you.” Annie bolted to the rickety staircase set into the back wall of the lobby. 

“Let me know if you need anything, dearie.” It didn’t take Annie long to find Jeff’s apartment.

Annie knocked on the door. Nothing. Annie knocked again. Again, nothing. She looked down a feeble light filtered under the door. Someone was home, or Jeff had left his lights on. Jeff wasn’t the type to leave the lights on. She wanted to leave, but the memory of his eyes kept her rooted here. Maybe he and Gwynnifer were spending some quality time together and didn’t hear her knocking. She could see the look of disgust on Jeff’s face when she barged into his apartment, and yet she doesn’t turn around and leave. There was no way she could break the door down by herself. Jeff must have a spare key.

Gwynnifer had a key, she thought bitterly. Annie groaned internally. She had promised herself to move on. Move on from what? A small kiss. She had kissed people before. Why was this time any different? After months of not talking and brushing her off, why did she still care. Jeff had made it crystal clear that he had no interest in her, and now she was rummaging under his…. Aha, Annie found a small golden key under his welcome mat. She contemplated it for a second, but before she could change her mind again, she unlocked the door. His apartment was dark, except for what Annie suspected was the bathroom. 

“Jeff, are you here?” No answer. “Jeff...”

She followed the light to the bathroom. She flinched at the sight that greeted her. Jeff was sitting, sprawled out, fully clothed in his empty bathtub and drinking scotch straight from the bottle. He looked dead on his feet; his skin sickly white; rings under his eyes, rumpled shirt, his hair sticking up at all ends. As if the only thing he had to eat or drink that day was his scotch. The Winger charm gone and in its place a shell. 

“Leave me alone, Annie.” His voice was raspy, sand paper against stone. Annie slung off her purse and placed it gently on the toilet seat. She sat herself on the edge of the tub. 

“What happened?”

“Nothing, don’t you have someone else to follow around like a lovesick puppy.” Annie recoiled, he knew just how to sting her. Annie knew that with Jeff she had to stand her ground.

“Apologize.” He narrowed his eyes in response.

“Or what? You’ll kiss me again. When are you going to get the hint? I don’t want you.” Tears welled up in Annie’s eyes, but she swallowed and sat still. Jeff Winger couldn’t just run her off with a couple of choice insults. For all he had grown in the last year, he still knew how to twist the knife. Without a word she took the scotch from his loose grip, took a swig of liquid courage. And then set the bottle next to her purse. She straightened and turned her eyes back to Jeff, cementing her resolve. 

“I am going to put this down to you being drunk.” 

“Doesn’t alcohol reveal the truth?” Annie ignored him and for the third time that night she stayed. She took off her ballerina flats and stepped into the tub, sitting down between his legs facing him, and tucked her legs underneath her. The water spout digging into her back. 

“Something happened to you and you did what you always do. Run away.” He cocked his head. 

“You didn’t mind last time.” 

“Last time you didn’t look like this. So I am going to ask again. What happened?” She stared into his ice chip eyes. As if someone had opened a plug hole, all his drunken bravado drained out of him.

“My dad died. Don’t feel bad he wasn’t a good guy.” Jeff looked at her, and when she didn’t gasp, realization spread across his face. “You knew.”

“No, but I guessed. Abed told me about your conversation last year. He hit you and your mother?” Then she saw Jeff for what he was. A scared little boy. His hands curled into fists until his knuckles went white.

“He didn’t hit anybody once I was old enough to hit back.” There was a defiance in his voice. As if his dad was standing right in front of him. She placed a hand on his knee. 

“And when was that? Jeff, how old were you when you had to protect your mother, from a grown man, who was drunk and violent?”

“Sixth grade, I cracked a bottle of Corona across his face. But when my mom called today, I felt sad. I haven’t seen him in twenty years. How fucked to is that? He got remarried. Has kids too. They invited us to the funeral. He was a monster. I know he was a monster. I should jump for joy, but I’m sitting in my bathtub drunk.” She gave him a sympathetic look and patted his knee. “I spent my entire life trying to get away from that sad excuse for a man. Now that he’s dead I feel like...”

“You lost your chance.” Annie tried to keep her voice steady. 

“Yeah, how fucked up is that?” He repeated more to himself than to her. 

“It’s human, Jeff. He is your father. However horrible. It’s human to want to connect.” He gave her a look that showed that he wanted that to be true. Jeff took a deep breath. His eyes unfocused. 

“When I was seven, he locked me in the trunk of his car for two days because I spilt my bowl of cereal. In fifth grade, he broke my arm because I scored on him in basketball. On Sunday mornings, mom would make waffles for breakfast. She’d make the best waffles. Fresh and crispy. She even put out the fancy tablecloth, and most Sunday’s he just sat down and ate. But now and then he’d rip the entire breakfast off the table. The entire beautiful breakfast was interspersed between bits of broken glass and ceramic. He’d yell horrible things at mom about how she was a failure. A High School drop out with just enough luck to get herself pregnant with one ugly kid. That she should do us all a favor. Put me in the car and drive off the nearest cliff. Then he would storm out of the house. Mom would get on her hands and knees and clean the total mess up and then cry and pray for him to come home. I used to say that it wasn’t his fault. I had set him off. I blamed the alcohol. I blamed the drugs, even blamed myself. But when my mom called today, I felt sad. I haven’t seen him in twenty years.” Jeff went silent. Tears rolling down his cheeks. Annie squeezed his knee.

“It’s not your fault.” Jeff’s eyes softened. But they didn’t quite believe her.

“It doesn’t make it any easier.” He hung his head and stared at the porcelain beneath his legs. Annie said the only thing she could think of.

“I’ll go with you to the funeral.”

In a quiet voice he said, “his family want me to give a eulogy. What do they except me to say? I’m glad he can’t hurt my mom anymore.” 

“You don’t have to speak if you don’t want to, but I think you should go. I’ll go with you. Unless you want to take Gwynnifer.” A rough laugh escaped his chest.

“No, I’d much rather take you.”


End file.
